Customized Cancer Cell Lines Should Boost Development of Drugs for Personalized Medicine

A commercially available catalog of genetically modified cancer cell lines is expected to boost research efforts to develop drugs for personalized medicine.

Initial offerings of cell lines that model colorectal and lung cancer are already being supplied by Sigma Life Science (St. Louis, MO, USA). These cell lines were created using Sigma's proprietary CompoZr Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) technology.

Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) are a class of engineered DNA-binding proteins that facilitate targeted editing of the genome by creating double-strand breaks in DNA at user-specified locations. Double-strand breaks are important for site-specific mutagenesis in that they stimulate the cell's natural DNA-repair processes, namely homologous recombination and nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). Using well-established and robust protocols, these cellular processes can be harnessed to generate precisely targeted genomic edits resulting in cell lines, including somatic cell lines, with targeted gene deletions (knockouts), integrations, or modifications.

Sigma's CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are designed to enable basic research and high content, high throughput screening of compounds and biologics. Sigma believes that these cell lines will accelerate the development of personalized medicine through target validation, identification of mechanistic actions of drugs, and investigation of disease development, progression, and remission.

"CompoZr Oncology Disease Model cell lines are our latest addition to what we anticipate will become the most comprehensive collection of modified human cell lines with a significantly higher degree of predictability for drug function and biological responses than conventional cell lines,” said Supriya Shivakumar, global marketing manager at Sigma Life Science. "By harnessing the power of our award-winning CompoZr ZFN technology, we have generated cancer cell lines with precise, stable, and heritable gene knockouts and knockins, providing scientists with innovative tools to enable the development of drugs for personalized medicine.”

Next in the pipeline is a panel of genetically modified cell lines that model breast cancer.

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